So I received a closed Beta key yesterday and being the huge fan of Quake that I am what with it being the very first game series that introduced me to PC gaming way back when I quickly set about getting it set up to play. Only I didn't realise it had to run though Bethesda's own launcher and adding it to Steam causes it to not even load. After downloading and then installing 8-9GB I fired up the game and to my surprise it looked decent enough and played pretty well. It's as fast and fluid as you would expect with very tight controls and a look and feel you will instantly be familiar with.

The first thing I realised though was there was no double jump on my character. Odd I thought. Secondly your character just won't shut the hell up and keeps pandering on about various things which got annoying very quickly. I've yet to find an option to disable it. Map design is excellent and there was a good variety on offer with nice path flow and floor pickups in the traditional yet logical places ie armour upgrade under a bridge or on an extended ledge, health pickups down the sides of a corridor and Quad Damage at the center of the map on a long walkway.

You already know the drill on precisely how the game plays if you've ever played a Quake based game. Frag or get fragged. Weapons are made up of the usual shotguns, assault, rocket and insta kill lazer types. I did miss having the main rocket based weapon I adored so much in Quake III but what is on offer suffices enough.

What instantly hit my eyeballs was the fact the game defaults to a 130 FOV. 130! I instantly felt a bit ill I must admit even the minimum FOV is 110. A far cry from my usual 85-90 that I feel much more comfortable with. The game has also seemingly taken a page out of the Overwatch book with shader based rewards gifted from loot crates that alter certain colours if not all of your character. There's also additional bits and pieces you can to your character such as a chin strap or extra armour etc etc that take up three extra slots. It's not as extensive as say DOOM multiplayers customisation but it's enough to assist in making variations on your character to stand out from others.

The closed beta is still under a strict NDA so I'm not allowed to share any screenshots or anything else. All I can say is that the game sure as hell seems more complete than the current UT does which is a bit shocking I must say. Overall I think I played a solid 3-4 hours of it just yesterday and was reminded of just how much fast twitch shooters can still be my thing, even with my much slower much older reactions.

Quake Champions is due to be a free to play title and no release date has yet been confirmed.

First time I looked at this I just assumed it was a new Q3 Arena, but with an inexcusable lack of Orb and Klesk. So it's an arena shooter with perfunctory classes but with the standard Quake weapon set available to all? That sounds more my thing than Overwatch and the like (where only the faster characters feel right to me).

Are you able to say whether it has any basic party / friends list functionality yet?

I'll preface this by saying again that I am more a UT man than a Quake man. With that in mind here are my thoughts after a fair few games this weekend.

First up it has the Overwatch disease of taking too long for a game to get started.First you have to search for a match, then everyone has to click Accept. After that you go to a loading screen with the two teams listed. Then another loading screen with each class chosen. Then another loading screen with a close up of each team member. Then finally you are in game, but there is a 60 second period where you can run around and shoot each other before the game starts properly.

I'm not really sure the different classes have enough about them. With one active and one passive skill they don't really have that much effect on the battlefield. It's mostly about getting the best weapons and getting the jump on your opponent. It feels like something they felt obliged to put into the game because that is what shooters do now. It could just as well not have classes for all the difference it seemed to make when playing. Maybe different modes will require you to have a balanced team of classes, but in straight deathmatch it seems pointless.

Oh and the weapon models leave a lot to be desired, they don't really have much character to them. Finally the shooting lacks heft, hitting an opponent doesn't feel like it is doing much and it is only the damage numbers coming off enemies that shows you are doing any damage and of the weapons, unless you have the shotgun, railgun or rocket launcher, you are unlikely to kill anyone as the rest just seem to not put out any real damage.

It is super fast though. So it has that.

There is an open tech test taking place from the 12th to the 21st of May if anyone fancied trying it out.